Saturday, October 5, 2013

Is that really Kona coffee you're buying? Why the law's not helping you as much as it could.

A whole patchwork of antitrust, taxation, and food laws and regulations governs coffee imports. Since 1996, import marking laws have specifically exempted coffee from the requirement that a product be labeled with its country of origin.

In 1992, the Hawaiian legislature passed a law requiring that coffee sold as "Kona" coffee in Hawaii contain at least 10% of Kona coffee. Why just 10%? Blending is probably the best way for Kona coffee to get itself sold, since it is rare and expensive.

But this Hawaiian law has no effect anywhere but Hawaii. On the mainland, you could buy a coffee blend labeled "Kona" that contained exactly 0% of Kona coffee.

Or so Michael Norton, executive of Kona Kai Farms in Berkeley, CA, probably thought. For several years, Kona Kai Farms packaged an inferior blend of Central American coffees and sold it as "Kona."

In 1997, a group of Kona farmers sued Kona Kai Farms (alongside various retailers like Starbucks and Peet's who sold Kona Kai products) in a civil class action suit. The parties settled in 1999. Kona Kai Farms agreed to pay $1 million to 650 Kona growers and the retailers agreed to buy coffee from REAL Kona growers for several years. Meanwhile, the United States charged Norton with wire fraud and tax evasion. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison by a district judge.

Today, “100% Kona Coffee" and "100% Hawaiian Coffee" are registered U.S. marks with the Patent and Trademark Office.

But as to what percentage of Kona is in that coffee you're drinking? Your guess is as good as mine.

James Ming Chen, Around the World in Eighty Centiliters, Minnesota Legal Studies Research Paper No. 05-28; Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vol. 15, p. 11, 2006. ("A simple carafe of coffee, with cream and sugar on the side, vividly illustrates the tradeoff between comparative advantage and redistributive goals in the formation of trade policies.")

This blog is

Point of departure:

Mariana Valverde noted the "failure to analyze, and even to see, the legal dimensions of routine life" and "the areas of law that work without fanfare and without police" in Everyday Law on the Street: City Governance in an Age of Diversity. University of Chicago Press, 2012, 7-8.